


Cures for Common Poisons

by amanitamuscaria



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Snarry-A-Thon17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-10-25 21:45:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10773081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amanitamuscaria/pseuds/amanitamuscaria
Summary: "Severus Snape, I never thought I would have to call you a fool. Stubborn, vindictive, blind, but not a fool. However, I find I need to call you an unmitigated idiot."





	Cures for Common Poisons

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Either Harry or Severus has sustained a minor injury or illness and the other has to care for him.

Severus startled awake, heart pounding, gasping for breath, the sheets wound round his body soaked with sweat. He struggled free of the sheets and pulled his dressing gown on, resigned. He would get no more rest tonight.

A mouthful of cold coffee, and he swept out to the cauldron awaiting him. Perhaps - he scanned the shelves full of ingredients - perhaps River of Lethe water to begin?

He brewed until his clock chimed softly to tell him it was time for him to go to the Great Hall for breakfast, then placed his latest attempt at forgetfulness in stasis, and readied himself for the day.

Breakfast could only be described as torture.

The Great Hall was full of children; that hadn't changed in all the years he'd taught. His fellow teachers, also: some subdued, still waking up with cups of tea or coffee, others ready for the day; that, too, was the same. The teacher seated to his right, however - that was the difference.

Potter (flashed his eyes) glanced at him as he sat down, then wordlessly passed the coffee pot.

He didn't know. He couldn't know. He'd never know, for Severus would never tell him.

In the week that Potter had been sitting beside him - and how had that happened - he'd been perfectly content with Minerva, with her very occasional acerbic comments to one side, and Binns's silence to his other side. Minerva, of course, had moved into the central seat, so there had been a reshuffle. But Potter hadn't gone off to be an Auror, or a Seeker, or anything else. He'd remained at Hogwarts, spending his summer drifting aimlessly about the grounds between working at rebuilding the castle which had occupied all the teachers as well as a fair few Hogsmeade residents and some graduates of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang.

Severus had opened the Slytherin rooms to Durmstrang, and Vector had housed the Beauxbatons graduates in Ravenclaw. Gryffindor tower was uninhabitable, and Minerva had concentrated her energies on it and the Great Hall. Potter, however, had avoided his House, and worked on the greenhouses with Longbottom, the East Wing with Flitwick, or the central block with anyone else. He seemed to have lost something, as he was quiet, hardly spoke, hardly even looked up.

Severus was aware that Potter had returned to the Shrieking Shack to retrieve him, and had stood over him, insisting Poppy do her utmost for him, not allowing anyone except her access to him.

Potter had disappeared to London for two weeks in the summer, and had returned looking drawn, pale, and had requested a position at Hogwarts from Minerva.

Severus had, once he'd recovered enough, been invited to his old office by her, and after the initial awkwardness, she had told him Potter had gone to the Ministry and cleared him, but he would be safer at Hogwarts, at least for the immediate future, and that the school had great need of his skills for the rebuild and for teaching stability. He'd accepted easily.

Potter had not spoken to him of what he'd done in London, and he hadn't mentioned it either.

After he returned to his rooms, luckily undamaged, he'd found, a week later, a vial outside his door containing his memories. It was a few weeks after that, that Potter had taken up his customary seat at Severus's right hand. He'd tried to question Minerva about Potter, but she pressed her lips together and looked fierce, so he knew the topic was off-limits.

Potter teaching Defence to the first and second years was, he supposed, only natural. What else would the Saviour of the Wizarding world teach? Severus could raise no objection to the appointment, even if he'd wished to. Did he wish to? The balance of threat and safety, abhorrence and desire, frustration and rage seemed to teeter on a knife-edge in him. He kept to himself, spoke as little as possible, tried to become invisible.

He’d silenced the murmurs in class on the first day by taking a great number of points from all the houses, Slytherin included. The children saw Potter sit next to him by choice, and a whisper rustled through the Great Hall like a breeze through dry reeds. When Potter continued with the seating arrangement as the year moved through autumn, the whispers and hard stares that followed him gradually tailed off, but the rumours grew. He ignored it all, as he tried to ignore Potter. Tried not to look at Potter. The dreams, the nightmares continued, though.

He wasn’t the only one, either. Madam Pomfrey was having him brew Dreamless Sleep and Calming Draughts nearly every week, and he was working to improve the potions for long-term use.

The knock at his door late one evening was, he thought afterwards, perhaps not unexpected, although it was still unwelcome.

“Potter. What do you want.”

Potter peered at him from under the ridiculous hair, and he realised the boy looked as tired as he himself felt.

“Poppy says I’ve had my limit of Dreamless Sleep this week.”

“And so you imagined I would supply you against her advice? Do what the rest of us are doing.”

“And what’s that?”

Some imp of exhaustion and muddled thinking made him say, “Get drunk.”

Potter grinned at him tiredly—he knew his ability to frighten off the boy had disappeared long ago—and said, “OK. What have you got?”

“That wasn’t an invitation,” he said, but Potter had already stepped past him and was sitting down.

“Look, I’ll buy next time, it’s just I don’t keep any alcohol.”

The boy looked up beseechingly and Severus winced and turned to his sideboard. He didn’t need to see that expression on that face; another thing he’d be reliving in his dreams. Pouring some firewhisky into two glasses, he handed one to the boy and stood to stare into the fire.

“How do you deal with it?”

“What?”

“Well, I can see that you’re having about as much success in getting to sleep as me, but you’ve had years of dealing with this; how do you do it? Does it get any better?”

“No. You learn to live with it.”

“What, so you haven’t had a decent night’s rest since Voldemort returned?”

“No, I haven’t had a full night’s sleep for over twenty years.”

The young man stared at him, and he noted the dark shadow of stubble along the square jaw, the eyes, Lily’s green eyes, sunk in bruised-looking sockets. Hardly a boy, though he couldn’t erase the picture in his mind of the small boy stepping forward to don the Sorting Hat. Potter slumped forward, burying his face in his hands.

“I’ve only been getting the nightmares for seven years, and I thought they’d stop after Voldemort was gone. But they haven’t. They’re worse.”

“Are they.”

“I can’t do anything about them now, can I? I can’t bring back the people who died, I can’t stop the curses flying, I can’t stop dying, night after night.”

“And this is why you came back to the scene of the battle, to the place where so many of the events you dream of took place?”

“I was getting the dreams in Little Whinging. I was getting the dreams in London,” he said wearily.

“I would suggest, Mr. Potter, that you take a holiday away from the castle. The Weasleys and their daughter, I’m sure would be only too happy to welcome you for Christmas.”

“Well, after the breakup I had with Ginny, I’d rather leave that for a bit.”

“Your other friends, then. Go somewhere you’ve never been before and experience life.”

“My other friends are busy getting married and thinking about having children,” he said bitterly, staring down at his clasped hands. “There aren’t that many I would call friends and wish to impose this on.”

“And so you come to me for help. Has anything in our mutual history indicated that I would be of assistance?”

“Yes. You’ve saved me over and over. You’ve gone through this. You know about this.”

“And I have told you what I recommend. But then, you’ve never been good at taking my advice, have you?”

The boy looked up at him, frightened, desperate.

“I can’t go away. I’m afraid.”

“What of? What would frighten you, Mr. Potter?”

“That if I leave it will all disappear. I’ll never be able to find it again. That everyone will disappear. That you will disappear and I’d never see you again.”

“Why would you be concerned if I should disappear? I should have imagined you would welcome it, given our past animosity.”

“No. I would not welcome it, I haven’t thought of you as an enemy for some time. Quite the opposite, actually.”

He jerked back, partly from the look Potter was giving him, partly from the square hand laid on his arm, and partly from the sudden acceleration of his own heartbeat.

Potter looked confused as Snape flicked his wand, muttering diagnostic spells and shielding hexes at himself. With negative results, he turned his attention to the young man, covering the same gamut of tests.

“What have you eaten today?”

“What? Um – breakfast, lunch and dinner. You were there, you know.”

“Nothing else? No gifts of chocolate from admirers? No anonymous presents of bottles of drink?”

“No. All that stuff goes to the Ministry. They check it for poisons and booby-traps. I don’t know what happens to it after that.”

Snape peered at him, still suspicious.

“You’re under some sort of delusion. How long have you felt strange?”

Potter snorted self-deprecatingly, but also blushed and dropped his eyes.

“I guess it started with the Half-Blood Prince’s Potions book.”

He felt the anger rising, knew his face had twisted when Potter looked up.

“No, don’t, please. You – or your younger self – taught me so much more than I could have known I needed.”

“To cast spells that you had no idea of the effects of, and no clue of how to fix,” he spat bitterly.

“Yes, that, too. But also to question, not just to follow blindly, and to admire someone who could question, and create new spells, improve old formulas.”

“Yes, create new spells to damage and destroy.”

“But also to heal and help.”

“I think you had better go now, Mr. Potter.”

“All right. But will you allow me to repay your hospitality? Please?”

“We’ll see,” he said, hustling the young man out of his rooms before anything else could happen.

Obviously something had affected the young man, and he went to see Poppy Pomfrey the next day.

“No residual spell damage to Potter, just his usual addle-headedness,” she said briskly when he informed her of Potter’s seeking him out.

“He was thoroughly checked after the battle, after the time they were in Malfoy Manor?”

“Oh, yes, they all came up remarkably unscathed. On the other hand, I still want to run those tests for residual Crucio damage. On both of you, and Miss Granger.”

“I am fine,” he said quickly. “Then how do you explain this peculiar change in him?”

“I expect dying will tend to do that to people,” she said, tidying her papers.

“Dying.”

“Yes, didn’t he tell you?”

“No, he did not. So you believe this is some construct left by trauma?”

“Perhaps it is Mr. Potter having time to focus on something other than death and fighting.”

“You think this is normal?”

She studied him closely.

“I don’t think there is anything particularly abnormal about it.”

“Nothing abnormal about the Golden Boy forming an inappropriate fancy for an old Death Eater?”

Poppy hid a smirk by turning to move some paperwork, and said, “Ex-Death Eater, I hope. And I should imagine our Harry has very little in common with his own age group. He is a teacher at this school. Who would you suggest he socialises with?”

“Surely you don’t wish to encourage this? You don’t want to throw him at me?”

“I doubt anyone could ‘throw him at’ someone our Mr. Potter did not wish to be thrown at.”

“Fine. I’ll deal with this myself. I merely thought you might wish to spare the boy’s feelings.”

“Now, Severus, don’t do anything you may regret.”

“I regret – this whole situation,” he snarled, slamming out of the office.

When he sat down to think about the conversation later, he was most surprised by Poppy’s casual acceptance of the notion of Potter and himself in any sort of association. She’d been his sounding board from his earliest days at Hogwarts, keeping anything told to her to herself. Illicit potions accidents, dubious curse injuries were treated without comment. Confidences let slip whilst suffering went no further, and although he had never spoken of heartbreak and sorrow, he knew others had, and Poppy was known to be a safe ear. But he’d thought she would have rushed to save the hero Potter from any involvement with himself.

Potter knocked on his door a few nights later. He proffered a bottle and Severus was tempted to snatch it and slam the door on the young man, but resisted.

“I figured it’s not much use waiting for you to visit me. Rosmerta said that was a nice drink, and the hangover wouldn’t be as bad.”

Severus looked at what he was holding and snorted. Obviously, Rosmerta’s ideas about what young men wanted to drink hadn’t changed; he recognised the Ghostly Spirits bottle.

“We used to call this ‘Ghastly Spittings’. Batty!”

Potter looked worried, but then a house-elf he’d not seen before appeared. It looked expectantly at Severus, who bent down to enunciate close to it, “Orange juice.”

It nodded briskly, and reappeared moments later with a jug.

“Batty?” Potter asked, but the elf didn’t respond, and disappeared.

Severus glanced at him while producing two glassfuls of drink.

“No one realised he was deaf and dumb until he was fully grown.”

“I guess he would be the ideal house-elf to look after you.”

Snape just grimaced, and took a sip. He stood up suddenly and swept out of the room, returning with a vial which he gave to Potter.

“You may need that tomorrow morning. Rosmerta is not correct about the hangover.”

“Oh! Thanks! This doesn’t taste as bad as firewhisky though.”

“A small benefit: a terrible taste reminds you of the damage you are inflicting on yourself.”

“Then why do all the cures taste so dreadful?”

“To remind you not to do whatever you were doing to need the cure, obviously.”

Potter laughed, and Severus allowed himself the luxury of watching. He found he had the opportunity to watch Potter unobserved a number of times that evening, and he took them all.

When he left, Potter asked, “Can I come again? It’s no use inviting you to mine, I guess, but what evening’s good for you?”

He looked down at the narrow face, eye sockets still looking bruised around the clear green eyes, and thought, ‘I won’t give this up until I have to’.

“Friday is quite convenient,” he found himself replying.

The smile that broke over Potter’s face was worth putting up with the voice in his head that told him he was mad. Well, perhaps he was. 

As the winter deepened, Severus found himself looking forward to the end of the week more and more. His enjoyment of weekends had previously centered on not having to deal with classrooms full of ignorant children and having the time to devote to reading, research and brewing. Now, he had the evenings to look forward to as well. He knew it would end; it had to end. But until it did, he would enjoy it. He still checked Potter for spells and hexes when he came upon likely candidates in his research, but he’d lost the obsessive edge to the search. He suspected he didn’t want to find the hex; he was pretty sure he didn’t want to lift it. 

Friday night, and Potter arrived with a bottle shaped like a skull.

“It’s a good thing I brewed some fresh hangover mixture, by the looks of this,” Severus said, taking the thing.

“Tequila. The man said it doesn’t give you a hangover.”

“The man doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” he scoffed, pouring two glasses.

“You’ve provided me with quite an education. I’d never have tried half of this stuff if it hadn’t been for you.”

“I hope your liver is as enthusiastic about your education.”

He lazily fired off the latest of the hex-removing spells he’d found, with no result.

“Are you still trying to discover who jinxed me? When are you going to accept that I come to see you because I like you?” Potter laughed.

“Probably on the same day Minerva and Hooch dance the can-can on the Head Table at supper.”

Potter laughed again, then looked at him seriously and a little sadly.

“But I do. Is there nothing I can do to convince you?”

“Leave it, Potter. Things are fine as they are.”

And he wasn’t going to spoil this by driving Potter away, by wanting more than this, by exposing the raw want and need, and scaring the young man witless, no doubt.

“Ah. I won’t be able to make next Friday, by the way.”

Potter was still speaking, but he couldn’t hear the words. There seemed to be a roaring in his ears, and his brain was saying, ‘There it is. A good thing you haven’t said anything. He’s found someone, someone more suitable to fix his attention on. He will move on, and you’ll be here, with Fridays just like before. More books, more brewing. Thank you for small mercies, you didn’t expose yourself.’

“Snape? Severus? Are you all right? You’ve gone very pale?”

The young man was standing over him, looking worried.

He brushed him away, standing up.

“I’m fine. Don’t fuss. The tequila isn’t agreeing with me; I believe I shall retire.”

“Well, all right, if you’re sure?”

“I’m fine,” he snapped.

He remembered to give Potter the hangover mixture, and then the closing of the door behind him sounded like a stone falling into place on a tomb. His tomb. Potter would finish the year, no doubt, and move on to something much more suitable for a hero and gilded youth. He himself would stay, teaching uncaring children, mouldering away behind his door, getting older and greyer until, perhaps, one day he wouldn’t realise he’s dead, and turn up to teach as a ghost, just like Binns. He flung his glass into the fireplace and got a volume he’d been studying, but stopped to think. Perhaps – could it have been the spell? Was he right all along, and the curse that was on Potter was now gone? Well, either way, it didn’t matter. The man was gone, and he’d have to make do with his memories of the smile, the laugh, how Potter’s eyes, no longer set in dark hollows, sparkled with laughter. He opened the book, determined to salvage something of the evening, refusing to accept his sorrow and pain.

He made sure he was early to breakfast, standing as Potter entered, he nodded frostily at the young man, cursing himself as he saw the welcoming smile turn to confusion. The next few days, he arrived for meals unpredictably, ensuring he wouldn’t have to speak to the man. Potter left for wherever he was going early Thursday, and he breathed a sigh of relief; at least he had the weekend to recover. 

Poppy sat down in Potter’s seat at supper on Saturday. She was tight-lipped, and he could tell she was angry.

“Just what do you think you are playing at, Severus?”

“I’m sorry, Poppy? What are you referring to?”

“Harry.”

“Ah. I discovered the curse that had been laid on him, and removed it.”

“Curse? There was no curse on Harry.”

“There was. I cast Remedium Caecitatis on the boy, and he left to go to wherever he’s gone.”

“You cast … what?”

“Remedium Caecitatis. I found it in Fogbrothers’ Compendium.”

“Severus Snape, I never thought I would have to call you a fool. Stubborn, vindictive, blind, but not a fool. However, I find I need to call you an unmitigated idiot.”

“Do you. Fine. If that is all, I shall -”

“No, that is not all. Sit down, you silly man. You would have done better to cast that spell on yourself. Although I doubt anything in Fogbrothers would do anyone any good.”

“Yes, well, it appeared to do the trick.”

“Did it. Do you know where Harry has gone this weekend?”

“No, and I have no interest -”

“He’s gone to Ginny’s wedding. She is marrying Mr. Zabini. I believe Harry was attempting to invite you to go with him.”

“And why would I want to go to a wedding? Why would Potter want to invite me?”

“Because he cares for you, heaven only knows why, as dense as you appear on the subject. He came to me on Thursday, as he’s been trying to speak to you all week, but you appear to not be available to speak to him any more. He’s very worried about you, and doesn’t know what he’s done. There was some mention of tequila, but I think the poor boy was getting confused by that point.”

“No. He can’t care for me.”

“But he does. When he gets back tomorrow, you will find him, and you will speak to him about all this. Explain what it is you believe you have done, and allow him to have his say. And Severus, please listen to him.”

He looked at his old friend, and couldn’t find it in his heart to disbelieve her. He nodded sharply, saying, “I believe you are mistaken, but I will try.”

“Just – talk, for Merlin’s sake. And, equally important, listen.”

He decided, if he was going to do this, he was going to do it properly. Whatever else he might be, and Lord knows, he was no one’s ideal, he was not a coward. Thus, Sunday evening found him standing outside Potter’s rooms. He noted, when the door opened, that the man had slid back towards the haggard, sleepless look he’d worn when they first began this – whatever it was. But he’d received a tentative, worried smile, so forged on.

“I have an apology to make, if you would allow me.”

“Come in. Apology?”

“Yes. When we last spoke, I have been told I made assumptions that were unwarranted. I should like to renew our Friday nights, if you can find it in yourself to forgive me.”

“What assumptions,” Potter asked mildly, gesturing to one of the chairs by the fireplace and going to a side table.

When he returned with two glasses, Severus had had time to look about Potter’s quarters. The room was very plain, monastic almost. Two pictures and a few books on the mantel. The table held a pile of students’ essays, a quill and inkpot. A heavy curtain half-hid a narrow bed.

“You have taken one of the assistant teachers’ rooms.”

“I am an assistant teacher,” Potter said, looking around him, “It’s ample for me.”

“So you don’t see yourself as staying, making this your career?”

“I have no reason to leave. But I have no reason to have larger rooms, either; I have nothing to put in them.”

“Nothing? In all your years with your relatives you have nothing?”

Potter shook his head, still fixing Severus with a steady, quiet gaze.

“What were the assumptions you said you’d made?”

“I believed you had been hexed to seek me out. I believed our mutual – animosity made any other explanation impossible.”

Potter sighed, still watching him.

“I didn’t believe Dumbledore, he kept telling me he trusted you, and that I should, too. But I couldn’t accept that. And you made it very easy for me to keep my suspicions. I was on the tower when you killed Dumbledore. I couldn’t understand it, until I saw your memories. And until I accepted I had been feeding him poison from the chalice in the cave. So I had done exactly the same as you.”

“Thrice-damned, then,” Severus muttered.

“How so?”

“He was dying from the cursed ring he’d put on his finger. You fed him poison. Then I finished the job. He shouldn’t have asked that of you.”

“I was about to say the same to you.”

They looked at each other sombrely, and Severus raised his glass in a wordless toast, then drank.

“I’m leading you into bad habits, it appears.”

“I like this stuff. It’s better than anything else I’ve tasted. Spanish brandy, Muggle,” he added, at the questioning look from Severus.

“It’s acceptable.”

“And then, the doe. That was you, wasn’t it?”

Severus nodded, hoping the man would ask no more about that night. The memory was seared into his mind, set behind as many walls and locks as he possessed.

Potter, however, after gazing at him for a long moment, simply stated, “You waited. To make sure it all went right. You wouldn’t leave without making certain.”

Severus closed his eyes, seeing the pale thin boy standing beside a frozen pond in woods again.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and started to find Potter standing beside him.

“How did you manage to do that? How did you keep Voldemort from suspecting? He never did, he believed you were his to the very end.”

“I – am very good at lying. At showing people what they want to see.”

“I wish you wouldn’t lie to me. Not now. Not any more.”

“No,” he said simply.

“Will you tell me what upset you? What assumptions were so painful?”

The young man was so close, half-sitting on the arm of Severus’s chair: so close and yet, unobtainable. Severus felt like he was falling into the green eyes, drowning in spring pools, and then, the eyes softened a little more.

“Ah. You couldn’t believe I wanted you. How could you not believe it? It’s you I don’t want to lose, not Hogwarts, not magic, even.”

The square strong hand, slightly rough, came up to turn his face back up, to brush away the curtains of hair that shielded him.

“Don’t play with me, Potter!”

“I’ve never been more serious in my life. Don’t push me away again, please.”

He turned his face into the hand that still rested on his face, and the man gathered him to himself.

“This is what I need, what I want.”

Potter leant over to kiss him, and he decided he was never going to let go.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment here or at [Livejournal](http://snape-potter.livejournal.com/3729323.html), [Insanejournal](http://asylums.insanejournal.com/snape_potter/1666429.html), or [Dreamwidth](http://snape-potter.dreamwidth.org/971905.html).


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